Leading furniture retailer halves carbon emissions

Since 2009, the IKEA Group has increased its use of renewables, energy efficiency initiatives and reduced its waste. This has led to the group announcing that they have now halved their total carbon emissions from global operations in the past six years.

How did they do it?

According to the company’s sustainability report for 2016, total emissions have dropped by 49 per cent over the last six years. The furniture giant has improved following a prolonged period of investment in wind, solar and biomass technologies: investing a total of €1.5 billion in solar and wind generation.

IKEA produced 3,209 Gwh from their investment in the three technologies in 2016, a third higher than the previous year – 71 per cent of the total amount of energy consumed. The company hopes that by 2020 all of their operations will be subject to clean energy.

Energy efficiency

As well as installing technologies to create power, IKEA is also increasing its efforts in energy efficiency. The target is to become 30 per cent more energy efficient by August 2020 compared to 2010.

The IKEA Group is over halfway to their target with a 15.5 per cent improvement achieved across its 340 retail stores and a 28.6 per cent improvement in distribution centres. This has been thanks to over half of stores being retrofitted with LED lighting.

The company is also installing power quality optimisation equipment to convert energy from the grid to a more suitable quality and quantity for their equipment. The report states that this can reduce energy use by more than 5 per cent.

Improving your company’s energy efficiency

Your company’s energy efficiency plans might not be on the same scale as IKEA, but there are ways for you to reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, installing certain measures can reduce your business’s energy costs.

Our energy audits take into account any budgetary limitations and provide the most cost-effective solutions to reduce both your energy costs and carbon footprint. For more information call us on 01509 414 222 or email [email protected].